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Comedy Deep Dive: Marc Maron, WTF and the Podcast That Changed ComedyMarc Maron recorded 1,686 episodes of WTF with Marc Maron. For the fina

Comedy Deep Dive: Marc Maron, WTF and the Podcast That Changed ComedyMarc Maron recorded 1,686 episodes of WTF with Marc Maron. For the fina

Marc Maron recorded 1,686 episodes of WTF with Marc Maron. For the final one, he went back to Barack Obama, the guest whose 2015 visit to Maron’s garage became a defining moment in podcast history.

In this Comedy Deep Dive, Johnny Mac tells the story of Marc Maron and WTF, from Maron’s turbulent years in stand-up and radio to launching a podcast out of his garage and becoming one of comedy’s most important interviewers.

We revisit the unlikely rise of WTF, Maron’s reputation for being brilliant, combative and occasionally difficult, his years at Air America, and the interview style that separated WTF from the traditional celebrity publicity circuit. These weren’t five-minute junket conversations. Maron talked about failure, addiction, jealousy, depression, careers, relationships and comedy, often getting famous guests to tell stories they hadn't told anywhere else.
There’s the extraordinary Robin Williams conversation that was eventually selected for preservation by the National Recording Registry. There’s President Barack Obama arriving at Maron’s garage with the Secret Service in 2015, a moment that helped demonstrate how powerful podcasting had become. And there’s Obama again, a decade later, sitting down with Maron for the final WTF.

The story also includes Maron’s sobriety, the devastating loss of filmmaker Lynn Shelton, his From Bleak to Dark comedy special, the documentary Are We Good?, his acting career, and why WTF became something that countless podcasters tried to imitate but could never quite reproduce.

After sixteen years, hundreds of millions of downloads and conversations with many of the biggest names in comedy and entertainment, Marc Maron decided he was done.
So what exactly did WTF change?

Questions this Comedy Deep Dive answers: Why did Marc Maron end WTF? How did WTF with Marc Maron begin? Why did Marc Maron record a podcast in his garage? What made Marc Maron’s interview style different? Why was the Robin Williams WTF interview so important? What happened when Barack Obama visited Marc Maron’s garage? Why was Obama appearing on WTF a landmark moment for podcasting? How did WTF influence comedy podcasts? Who was the final guest on WTF with Marc Maron? And why was WTF so difficult to imitate?


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Calaroga Shark Media.

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Has it been a year already? Hi, I'm Johnny Mac

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with your daily comedy news on Saturdays with Doing Deep Dives.

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And on October 13th, 2025, Marc Maron got in a car,

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drove to Washington, D.C., walked into the office of Barack

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Obama and recorded the final episode of WTF with Marc Maron,

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episode 1686. The first episode had gone up on September 1st, 2009,

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from the garage of Marc Maron's house in L.A., recorded

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on equipment that cost a few hundred dollars with an

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audience of basically nobody. Sixteen years later, the last episode

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was recorded in the office of a former president of

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the U.S. who had appeared on the show once before

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in 2015, sitting in the same garage in L.A., which

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was the moment that definitely answered the question of whether

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podcasts were a real medium or a niche hobby for

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people who couldn't get on the radio.

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We've known this was going to happen for a little while,

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and we thought it would be a fun idea. A

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great thing, an honor to have the president stop by

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on this trip to Los Angeles. I'm a little nervous

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because he's the president and I've got to have a

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person in here. But that on top of the fact

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that they just swept my house with a dog. I

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had to hide my cats in the bedroom. They had

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to sweep that separately. There was a lot of panic.

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I was in, as you know, in Hawaii. While a

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lot of this was going on, my producer, Brendan McDonald,

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was dealing with a lot of pre-prep. But today, they've

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tented my entire driveway. I'm told there'll be a sniper

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on the roof. There's something in here that looks like

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an armed yoga mat I didn't ask too many questions about.

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There are Secret Service everywhere. There's people, three or four people,

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maybe five or six people out there with headphones on

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listening to this. Again, the entire walk from the street,

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that section of the street where the The motorcade's going

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to come up. It's tented.

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Oh, see?

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Look at that.

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I should turn that off. I put a lot of

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pressure on myself about this kind of thing. I want

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to connect, but I don't want to do a policy discussion.

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I don't want to do an interview that's been done before.

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I'd like to connect with him as a person. I

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got to hope that happens.

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When I teach the subject to college students, I always

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share that as the definitive episode of podcasting. If you

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listen to it, when Obama first gets there, he's the

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president of the United States. He's very serious. And then

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along the way, he drops the president stuff. And it's

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just Barack hanging out in the garage with Marc Maron.

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You can hear him get comfortable. And it just it's

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two guys talking now towards the end. I think Obama's

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brain kicked back in and he became the president of

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the United States again and talked about issues. But for

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a while there in the middle, it's just two guys

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in the garage.

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What do you do to have fun? I mean, I

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can't imagine what it's like to raise a family in

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the situation that you're in as president. It must feel

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sort of insulated.

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You know, the biggest fun I've had is watching my

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girls grow up. And they are magnificent. Look, hopefully every

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parent feels the way they do. I do about my daughters.

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Yeah.

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But I think they are spectacular. And when Michelle and

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I came into office, the biggest worry we had was,

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is this going to be some weird thing for them?

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And are they going to grow up with an attitude

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or are they going to think that everybody eats off

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of China?

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Right. Right.

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And are they?

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And, you know, it turns out that they've just become.

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They're kind, they're thoughtful. they treat everybody with respect. They, uh,

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don't have any kind of errors. Uh, they're confident, but

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without being cocky, um, they've got great friends. They've been

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able to, uh, you know, they're not stuck in the

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bubble the same way I am. Uh, you know, they

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go to the mall, they have sleepovers, they go to prom,

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Malia's started to drive. Um, you know, they're, they're, they're

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doing great. So, My biggest fun has been watching them

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grow up. Now, unfortunately, they're now hitting the age where

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they still love me, but they think I'm completely boring.

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And so they'll come in, pat me on the head,

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talk to me for 10 minutes, and then they're gone

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all weekend, right? And they break my heart. And so

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now I've got to start thinking, well, what's going to

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replace that fun?

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Right. But the one thing you don't have to worry

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about is like, well, I hope they don't get lost.

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That never happens.

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Yeah.

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The other episode, Obama in his own office for the finale,

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was an acknowledgement from one of the most significant figures

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in American public life that WTF with Marc Maron had mattered,

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enough to warrant that kind of closure. Maron announced the

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show was ending in June of 2025. He and his producer, Brendan,

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who'd been running the operation together since the beginning, described

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themselves as burnt out and satisfied with the work. 16 years. 1,600 episodes.

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55 million listens a year by the end, reportedly. 600

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million total downloads by 2022.

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This started.

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You know, the old garage, the, you know, just no

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one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out

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of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out

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how to continue living my life. Things were not looking

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good for me. Brendan McDonald, my producer who I'd worked

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with for years on other things, radio and streaming related.

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And when Brendan and I started this thing, All we

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knew is we were going to do it every Monday

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and Thursday and there was no way to make money.

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There was no way that we knew how to build

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an audience or anything.

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And it was, it was crazy.

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We were doing it in a garage at the beginning.

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That was just a garage.

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It was filled with junk and it, it slowly evolved

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into the show that became what you listen to twice

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a week, 16 years. We've been doing this and, uh,

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We've decided that we had a great run.

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They said they started it on their own terms. They

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grew it on their own terms and they were ending

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it on their own terms. Interesting to me, Marin got

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out right before the video boom or just as the

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video boom was starting. And again, I can tell you

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when the camera is on, you behave differently. And I

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wonder if there had been cameras filming Barack Obama in

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the garage, would you have gotten the president of the

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United States to drop it and just be Barack? I'm

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not sure. Marc Maron, born in Jersey City in 1963,

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grew up partly in Alaska and partly in New Mexico.

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He went to Boston University, dropped out, drifted into stand-up

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in the mid-80s in San Francisco and then New York,

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and spent most of the 90s and early 2000s in

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a position that's arguably the worst position to have in comedy.

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Talented enough that the industry kept putting him in proximity

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to opportunities, not quite commercially viable enough that any of

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those opportunities converted into career stability. He was on Morning

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Sedition on Air America, remember that? The radio station for

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the left? He was on in the mornings.

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I'm gonna go out there and give them the best

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damn final show they've ever heard.

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I'm going to embrace all my insecurities.

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I'm going to talk about candy and cats and iPods

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and my parents. I'm going to talk about the issues.

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And if all goes as planned, I'll have a major meltdown,

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just like my bosses want. Yeah, everyone goes home happy.

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And I get to do my final show. Ladies and gentlemen,

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for the last time on Morning Sedition, Mark Maron. Go.

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And writing geniuses, philosopher kings and queens, working class heroes,

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progressive utopians with no sense of humor, lurking conservatives.

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This is it, Mark Reilly.

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This is the final show. We're going to do it.

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We're going to reflect.

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We're going to get some closure.

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We're going to talk to our friends.

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We're going to make it a nice time.

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We're going to have a party.

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Is that all right with you?

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I'm fine with it.

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All right, Reilly. How are you feeling, man?

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Are you sad?

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He had conversations about TV that didn't go anywhere. This

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will shock you. He had a reputation inside the comedy

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world as someone who's both genuinely brilliant and genuinely difficult,

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who could be his own worst enemy in rooms that

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required a certain kind of professional smoothness that Marc Maron

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didn't consistently possess. His stand-up from that era is good

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in ways that reward attention. It's neurotic, confessional, self-lacerating in

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a way that felt specific rather than performed. Anxiety and

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anger and self-awareness folded together into material that the comedy

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community appreciated even when broader audiences weren't getting it.

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You have a father, right?

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No, I was cloned.

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I don't know. You know, your popular TV personality, it

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could just, all right.

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Right, they may be in a lab, of course.

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I just have some advice. If you have a father

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and you're a guy, what you gotta do is at

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some point, you just sit down with him over coffee, lunch,

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look him right in the eye and say, OK, is

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there any way I can avoid becoming you?

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Is there any way?

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Because it's happening and I want out.

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Did you keep a diary?

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Is there a map? Don't look at me like that.

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He was a comics comic in the sense that his

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peers recognized something real in the work, even when the

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commercial machinery was not amplifying it. Marin was, by his

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own account and by the account of most people who

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knew him during that period, not easy. He had relationships

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that ended badly, professional situations that ended badly. He carried

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things loudly and in public, which is what made him

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interesting as a comedian and what made him harder to

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work with as a professional. The podcast started in 2009,

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partly out of necessity and partly out of impulse. He

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needed something to do. He had a garage, he had

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a microphone, a computer. He called comedians he knew and

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asked them to come on. Then he posted the conversations

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for free on the internet. An audience found it and

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then a bigger audience found it and a bigger audience

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found it and it kept growing in the way that

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things that are genuinely good keep growing when the mechanism

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for distribution is available. What WTF was doing that no

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one else was quite doing in 2009 is more than

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just saying he invented the long form comedy podcast. It's true.

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It gets the job done. But Marin was doing something

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specific with the interview that was different from what podcast

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interviews had been doing and different from what radio interviews did.

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He wasn't asking comedians about their projects. He wasn't doing

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a press junket. He was asking comedians about their lives,

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specifically the part of their lives that shaped the work,

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the early years, the difficult years, the family stuff, the

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failure stuff. And he was doing it in a way

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you could tell he was actually invested in it rather

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than just professionally curious. He cared about the answers. You

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could hear it. When he was talking to a comedian

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who had been through something specific, he was drawing on

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his own specific things, and the result was a conversation

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rather than an interview, which is a different kind of listen.

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The Robin Williams episode was entered into the National Recording

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Registry as the first one-on-one podcast episode to receive that designation,

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which is to say the Library of Congress identified that

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episode as a document of cultural significance worth preserving.

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You know, in the old days, yeah, there was that

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whole thing about just going from club to club to club.

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It's one of my, yeah.

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Yeah.

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There are a lot of people that was like, you

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would say like, there were styles and you're like, but

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he's doing him. I go, yeah, it's, and a bird

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hurts doing Taylor Negron.

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Yes.

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You know, you go like at that point, you're going,

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look at the blending.

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Well, that behind every genius, there's a guy going, he

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stole my soul.

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But it's that whole thing of what's the bitterness versus

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do you want to hang out? Do you engage it?

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And you say, what's the truth of it? Yeah, I

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know the truth of the old days, but now it's like,

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I don't hang, so I don't know.

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Well, that's the weirdest thing is that there's this idea

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that when you have show business, which is just a

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community of bitter people aspiring to something, and they're children

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because what they're aspiring to is ridiculous. I mean, you've

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had a tremendous career for a lot of reasons. But

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there's a lot of people that, you know, that they

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just they go to Hollywood. I used to do a

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line where I said it took me years to realize

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Hollywood wasn't my parents. Wow.

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Looking for approval.

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Well, yeah, just like I'm here.

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Where's my where's my trailer? And I think that the

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bitterness that when when people dismiss somebody who's had a career,

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you know, as big and huge as yours, that the

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idea that like, you know, if he didn't take that

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one joke, he wouldn't be Robin Williams.

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I mean, it's ridiculous.

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I mean, you look at even you look at someone

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like Pryor, who literally did Cosby for the first time.

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Two years of his life.

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Before the auteur theory of comedy happened in the late 50s,

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where comics actually owned their point of view, I mean,

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it was what people did. I mean, you know, the

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Warshaw guys were like, are you doing that bit about

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the uncle tonight?

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Can I do it?

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All right. And it was interchangeable. It's also the idea of...

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you know common ground when you say when there's certain

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subjects you go you talk about you talking about the

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president i talk.

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About the president well yeah the obama garage episode from

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2015 was the moment that made undeniable something that the

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podcast audience had understood for years which is that wtf

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had become a place where serious things happen where people

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said things they hadn't said elsewhere and the format produced

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honesty that other formats didn't produce.

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It's kind of hard to say okay i okay look

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you know we had the fight like 10 years ago

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and I, I, I have held that against you for

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10 years and that's, that's hard to even say because, okay.

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I mean, from my point of view, it's always been

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that you did something really, really wrong to me. And he,

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and then you just refused that.

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I mean, that's the way that I looked, I looked

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at it, you know? And, uh, so the other day

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I was thinking about it again. I guess I hadn't

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really thought about it for a long time, not in detail.

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And I really went over in my head.

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I don't, you know, I don't know why.

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And, I realized that.

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It was my fault.

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Completely.

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And it's like, I was.

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A total asshole to you and I stopped being your friend.

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And I'm shocked now when I think of it.

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That I would ever.

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Have thought it was anything that you did. You did nothing.

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And I know that now. And I don't know how

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to look back at, you know, you look back at

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your actions and.

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Man I don't know I don't know if this has

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any meaning or worth to you and I don't maybe

305
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this is just more of me being selfish but I

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just want to say Mark that I'm sorry and I

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wish that.

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I don't know what else to say.

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Okay is that it or.

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Yeah I guess so.

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All right.

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Well, I appreciate that, but I guess you don't remember,

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but you came over here five years ago and said

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the exact same thing. I did.

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Other great guests, Louis C.K., 2017, Lorne Michaels. That was

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00:14:46.509 --> 00:14:50.940
a great episode. Robin Williams, Keith Richards, Carol Burnett, Conan, Jerry, Chappelle.

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00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.799
It's a document of the comedy world across 16 years.

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The interviews are durable in a way that junkets aren't.

319
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They're real conversations. They don't expire. Go back and listen

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to any of them. Along the way, Marin got sober.

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He started talking about that on the show. And the

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audience started to include people who were listening for the

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sobriety material, the anxiety material, for the honest account of

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what it's like to be a middle-aged man trying to

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figure out how to live without the things he'd been

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using to not live. There was a crossover audience, comedy

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fans and people in recovery, people with anxiety, people who

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just want to hear someone talk honestly about being a mess.

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Mark fell in love with Lynn Shelton. who died unexpectedly

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in May of 2020. He talked about that on the

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show eventually after months of silence and grief that were

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documented in real time. His special From Bleak to Dark,

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released in 2023, dealt with that grief directly and was

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the special that most clearly shows what WTF had always

335
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been doing, taking the material of a specific life and

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making something honest out of it. Not really therapy, not

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really entertainment for entertainment's sake, something in between where the

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laugh and the real thing exist at the same time

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without canceling each other out. There was the documentary in 2025,

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00:15:52.929 --> 00:15:55.750
Are We Good?, which tracked Mark's return to comedy after

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00:15:55.769 --> 00:15:58.470
Shelton's death, the HBO special, and the process of figuring

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00:15:58.490 --> 00:16:01.230
out what comes next. Since then, Mark has been on

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Stick on Apple TV Plus with Owen Wilson. I also

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00:16:04.049 --> 00:16:06.940
skipped over, what was the wrestling show? Glow on Netflix.

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Mark Maron, the actor. We will see what Mark Maron

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does as his career continues to evolve. On September 1st, 2026,

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00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:16.360
Mark Maron posted briefly, just to check in, just to

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00:16:16.399 --> 00:16:17.990
say hello and let the audience know he was still

349
00:16:18.029 --> 00:16:20.190
out there. No announcement, no project to promote. Just a

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00:16:20.230 --> 00:16:22.049
guy who would talk to an audience for 16 years,

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00:16:22.110 --> 00:16:24.269
touching base, because that's what you do with people you

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00:16:24.289 --> 00:16:28.250
have a relationship with. WTF showed that you could have

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long-form conversations about comedy. Radio won't do it. TV won't

354
00:16:32.409 --> 00:16:35.000
do it. Seven Minutes on The Tonight Show doesn't do it.

355
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Promotional interviews don't do it. WTF proved if you gave

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people access to those conversations in a format that had

357
00:16:39.889 --> 00:16:42.200
no time limit, no advertiser notes, and no producer in

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an earpiece telling you move on, people would listen. 55

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million times a year by the end. The thing is,

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you can't just do what Marc Maron did. There's so

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much to the show that is unique to Maron. The

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00:16:53.549 --> 00:16:56.700
garage was specific to Marin. The cats, specific to Marin.

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The anxiety, specific to Marin. The anger, specific to Marin.

364
00:17:00.460 --> 00:17:02.320
You can take parts of that. You can try, but

365
00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:04.789
it's never quite going to be what WTF with Marc

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00:17:04.809 --> 00:17:08.130
Maron was. The show worked because those specifics were real

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rather than performed. And an audience that's been trained by

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00:17:10.950 --> 00:17:13.759
years of media recognized the difference between real and performed

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00:17:13.819 --> 00:17:16.970
and recognized it immediately. Mark Maron ended the podcast on

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his own terms almost a year ago. Barack Obama flew

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him to Washington to help close it out. The National

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00:17:21.210 --> 00:17:24.430
Recording Registry has the Robin Williams episode, 600 million downloads,

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and cat angels everywhere. That's the show.

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00:17:27.710 --> 00:17:31.519
It's a show about them. And comedy is not therapy,

375
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just because it's the truth.

376
00:17:32.519 --> 00:17:32.980
Wait a minute.

377
00:17:33.059 --> 00:17:35.500
But if you're talking about a show about them, if

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00:17:35.539 --> 00:17:37.579
you're saying that a person that talks about themselves on

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00:17:37.660 --> 00:17:40.339
stage is not a comedian, then you're dismissing a great

380
00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:41.440
many great comics.

381
00:17:42.119 --> 00:17:42.220
Yeah.

382
00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:42.339
Yeah.

383
00:17:43.130 --> 00:17:43.369
Yeah.

384
00:17:43.450 --> 00:17:45.750
They did it wrong. No, they didn't do it wrong.

385
00:17:45.809 --> 00:17:47.910
Okay, you walk into a doctor's office and he talks

386
00:17:47.990 --> 00:17:49.569
about his problems instead of one.

387
00:17:49.589 --> 00:17:52.710
Well, that's an old joke. If a comedian talks about himself,

388
00:17:52.910 --> 00:17:55.619
and that is funny. If a comedian is a storyteller. See,

389
00:17:55.630 --> 00:17:58.720
by your rubric, you're dismissing people. He can't work at

390
00:17:58.980 --> 00:18:01.819
State Fair. Who wants to work at State Fair, necessarily?

391
00:18:02.019 --> 00:18:02.519
Everybody.

392
00:18:03.130 --> 00:18:03.430
Really?

393
00:18:03.450 --> 00:18:03.990
Yeah.

394
00:18:04.319 --> 00:18:05.779
So in order to work a state fair, you have

395
00:18:05.799 --> 00:18:06.900
to take the Gallagher class.

396
00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:10.299
You have to work faster and more general. There are

397
00:18:10.420 --> 00:18:13.660
families out there and they're not interested in your long,

398
00:18:13.940 --> 00:18:15.240
subtle story.

399
00:18:15.299 --> 00:18:15.880
Okay, that's fine.

400
00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:18.079
That's a state fair circuit. But the comedy club circuit,

401
00:18:18.119 --> 00:18:20.589
the cabaret circuit. can indulge it differently. Why can't you

402
00:18:20.609 --> 00:18:22.170
just see it as all being part of show business?

403
00:18:22.210 --> 00:18:22.630
Why are you angry?

404
00:18:22.650 --> 00:18:24.099
Because there's no show involved.

405
00:18:24.130 --> 00:18:27.640
There are a bunch of slovenly, they hunch over, they

406
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:30.539
turn their back on the audience, they take a drink

407
00:18:30.579 --> 00:18:31.740
of water.

408
00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:32.180
That's their style.

409
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:33.079
It's show business.

410
00:18:33.259 --> 00:18:34.400
Why are you drawing lines?

411
00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:39.299
Why are you taking the other side of everything I say?

412
00:18:39.400 --> 00:18:39.660
I'm not.

413
00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:40.559
You are.

414
00:18:41.589 --> 00:18:43.529
Why did you want me to do this interview if

415
00:18:43.589 --> 00:18:46.329
you don't think I know anything about what you're asking

416
00:18:46.349 --> 00:18:46.630
me about?

417
00:18:46.650 --> 00:18:47.230
I'm just telling you.

418
00:18:48.450 --> 00:18:48.930
You're done?

419
00:18:49.930 --> 00:18:50.950
You're just arguing.

420
00:18:51.069 --> 00:18:53.690
It's Howard Stern.

421
00:18:54.170 --> 00:18:54.460
I'm not.

422
00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:57.140
I was just having a conversation. I have more respect

423
00:18:57.160 --> 00:18:57.740
for comedy.

424
00:18:57.759 --> 00:18:59.259
You're trying to be controversial.

425
00:18:59.500 --> 00:19:00.920
I am not. Yes, you are.

426
00:19:01.099 --> 00:19:02.279
You're just arguing with me.

427
00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:04.160
I have 30 years of experience.

428
00:19:04.180 --> 00:19:06.640
Well, then tell me about comedy. I just think that

429
00:19:06.680 --> 00:19:09.740
show business is show business. Well, then just why don't.

430
00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:12.089
You do the interview and tell people your opinion?

431
00:19:12.109 --> 00:19:16.390
We were having a good conversation. Oh, come on, Gallagher.

432
00:19:22.150 --> 00:19:22.490
All right.

433
00:19:23.660 --> 00:19:28.940
Well, that didn't. Well, maybe it really went well.

434
00:19:31.220 --> 00:19:34.140
I don't know. I'm certainly not going to chase after him.

435
00:19:35.849 --> 00:19:37.410
That's your comedy news for today.